Mark is a Jimmy Buffet fan from way back. Even before Buffet became the star he is today, Mark had copies of his early LPs and had seen him in concert. Right before “Come Monday” hit the charts, Mark was one of a handful of people in the crowd at a small concert. Jimmy asked from the stage, “Where do people go and have a beer in this town.” Mark offered up the name of his favorite local college bar.
Later, after the show, Mark was sitting at that bar having a beer when in would walk, of all people, Jimmy Buffet. The two sat, talked, had a few beers (ok, maybe more than a few) and the next thing Mark knew Buffet was getting super famous and selling out venues.
Move ahead a few years and Mark and some friends showed up to an outdoor concert at Kings Island amusement park outside of Cincinnati wearing the most outrageous flowered “island” shirts anyone had ever seen. Mark had found his, literally, handmade, in a Russian thrift store in Los Angeles. He still has it though it must have shrunk because it no longer fits.
He and his friends were part of only about 20 or so fans dressed in outrageous clothes.
The next year when Buffet played the same venue, the crowd was filled with crazy fans wearing their best “island” gear. Legend has it that bassist Timothy B. Schmidt dubbed that crowd “parrot heads” that night.
In 2002 Buffet licensed the name of his famous song “Cheeseburger in Paradise” to OSI Restaurant Partners who opened a Buffet themed restaurant and turned it into a chain. Now there are about 40 restaurants in 16 states.
The one here is located at 812 Eastgate North Dr. and you can find them on line at http://www.cheeseburgerinparadise.com/Default.aspx. They offer up more than just cheeseburgers but we came to see if their burgers really did send us to paradise.
Burgers
We both ordered the traditional Beach Burger, which is made just like in the song. Both of us passed on the onion.
The burgers are one third pound, made to order patties of 100 percent ground chuck. They are thick and juicy but ours arrived at the table a little cold, like they had been sitting around waiting to be delivered for a few minutes. That did a great deal to down grade the quality of the meal.
While sitting around the burger’s juices soaked through the bun a little and made for a more than necessary soggy bottom. And trust us, we both hate it when our bottoms get soggy.
There’s nothing wrong with a burger that is so juicy that the bun slides around or even starts to disintegrate. But that’s only if the juices are good and piping hot from a burger that’s just off the grill. Not one that has been sitting around five minutes or more cooling off.
We both could imagine that a nice, hot burger, delivered on time, would have been good. This wouldn’t have been a great burger, nowhere near the top of our favorites list, but it would have been more than respectable, especially for a chain restaurant. But this burger was nowhere near paradise.
The same problem existed with the fries. They were cool and a big soggy from sitting around too long. There was nothing spectacular about the fries in any case. They appeared to be just ok to begin with and being cool didn’t help. Again, maybe if they were hot we might have taken the restaurant up on their standing offer of “endless” fries with the burger. But in this case, neither of us even finished our original order.
When we got our food and found it was cool, we seriously looked around the place to determine if it was because the restaurant was too full or the place was understaffed. Neither seemed to be the case. Perhaps ours just happened to be the unlucky order that didn’t get served on time or maybe everyone was suffering the same problem. We didn’t know. But the lack of decent service really did make us regret going there.
Perhaps sometime this winter when the weather outside is terrible we’ll go back to Cheeseburger in Paradise and give them another try. In the meantime, there are far better burgers to be eaten in this capital of parrot heads.
No comments:
Post a Comment